>This one is from Peter Kater's "Gateway" ca. 1988 (Gaia/Polygram>Records). This one may in fact exist on CD, so somebody may be able>to check perceived speed stability and etc. against the CD. The song>is from side 1, track 2 titled "Talk Back.">>This one was also most likely recorded to digital before pressing the>LP, and I'm not responsible for any possible digital ugliness you may>hear ;-).>>Wish I could post longer samples, but space and downloading time>constraints prevent it. As again, this one is about 3.5MB in size,>and requires the LPAC decoder, available here:>>http://www.nue.tu-berlin.de/wer/liebchen/lpac.html>>The sample itself can be downloaded here:

I time aligned it as best I could. The sample is about 34 secondslong. The vinyl version takes about 60 msec longer to complete thanthe CD version, so the speed accuracy of the turntable is about 0.2%on the slow side if the CD can be considered the reference.

I applied -0.43 dB to the left channel of the CD version, and +0.26 dBto the right channel. The volume was compared with the vinyl versionvia average RMS. WavGain (which uses David Robinson's replaygainalgorithm) gives about the same answer as average RMS.

I applied a linear fadeout to about the last 4 seconds of the sampleto approximate what Moi had done with his sample.

I won't say what I hear just yet. If you think the difference issufficiently subtle to warrant the use of a double-blind tool, visitone of the following sites:

P.S. Sometimes though the CD version of an old recording beats the LP. e.g. Frank Sinatra - Come Dance with Me - the CD isn't a great CD, but it's good, and the LP is terrible. This is quite rare though - usually the first release of a recording is the one which gets the most care, so LPs from the 1950s-1980s are often worth a listen.

I once borrowed Horowitz playing Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto on vinyl from the library. The record was very thick (it was from 1951 and they used lots of material), but it was old and scratched -- just terrible condition. But it must have been the first pressing, because all the high frequencies were there, nonetheless.

I later bought one of those re-releases on LP because I liked that rendition so much, and was horrified by just how much loss of high frequencies there were in that version.

So I went to a record collectors store and bought an earlier pressing from the 1950's, but damned if it still wasn't bad.

The CD release of it wasn't too bad, except they applied that stupid pseudo-stereo stuff to it, and I still think the library record sounded the best, even with all the scratches! I am appalled to think of all the great performances sitting around on first-pressing records which I'll never hear.